Bullying in Science - Starting a discussion (Aug/13/2008 )

Hey jorge,
charming as ever... let me guess..you've never been bullied because you WERE/ARE the bully...ipso facto there's no bullying!!! Don't you have a mommy (how old are you anyways?) were you serious or are you really such a grouch....

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You are serious....so you consider it bullying only when someone is not being nice to you? And when this happens...we have but two choices: grow up (whatever the heck that means- suck it up, try harder, fight etc) or go out and get a job (the badge of being an adult)?Oh and I forgot the whining...no whining...I wish things were this simple jorge...

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For some of us a PhD is a rather sharp transition from a school environment to a high stress workplace where rivalries and personal ego can get the better of some people. I am sure everyone is well familiar with the urban legend of the post-doc in a top lab that mixed radioisotope in the coffee in an attempt kill his competitor.

For many this is first time that they find themselves at the bottom of the (lab) hierarchy, totally depend on others to teach the basics and to add to all that, in a high stress environment where it is absolutely important to get it right at any and all cost. And like in any environment that are always some unpleasant people who can be opportunistic.

Also as this environment is a high stress place, even simple friction between lab members can go out of control.

Unlike school or most other work places there isn’t a define system for a PhD student or lab personal to address such problems. People management is not a skill a PI is taught, although they are expected manage a lot of people. They have gone from a great scientist to a manger of people and not all can make that leap. And thus the joke about what a great scientist really is...

As a result some labs have severe problems; lab politics, fiction between the PI and the lab, or even fiction between lab members. I am sure all of us can name a lab or two, where the lab politics are so bad, people flee. The worst of course, is when the PhD student believe that they cannot leave. Sometimes people get so wrapped up, so drown in their work they lose sight of things, like as you say leave and do something else.

That is also why quite a number of PhD students do change PI after their first year and a few take the ultimate exit and commit suicide. Most of us learn to play the game, become independent, confident of our skills and sometime a right evil bastard ourselves.

I guess what I am trying to say is if you are feeling bullied, talk to people. Other PhD students. The interesting PI from the lab downstairs that always seems to be eating cake.

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Hi pernesebleu,

Thanks for the input. I’ve never really understood this PhD student perspective….I only saw you guys as the arrogant and abusive PIs in-the-making, waiting for your turn at the top of the food chain.
Seriously, I agree with you about some PIs being reluctant
and ill-prepared to manage people so when conflicts arise, they just hope that they can resolve by themselves without any intervention. But I think that there are also instances when had the PIs been informed,
they would’ve taken action but sometimes there’s this culture of silence which can be pervasive in some work environments. Nobody wants to complain. The victim themselves don’t want to talk at all..who wants to be a tattle tale/whistle blower….it will be their word against somebody else’s and if one finally finds the courage to talk then they’re just dismissed as being whiny and childish…much like jorge’s pronouncement…should we even consider this bullying as a real problem in the lab at all? And yeah, we need more sympathetic, cake-loving PIs....

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Yeah, we hear you loud and clear jorge...you're the one sounding whiny now. And how can you narrow down the definition of scientists as only those who can defend their ideas etc. and if they can't they should be relegated to such posts as associates, assistants and peter pans..so who else are left- the PIs? Only PIs are considered scientists plus they don't whine?

And how could you know that those undergrads who immediately started earning a living to support a family don't whine about bullying? How did you reach this conclusion?

You seem to have at least two issues at work here- the bullying and the whining. Could you at least tell us or clear us up on your ideas about bullying (if you'd stop the scolding for a while) ie does it exist, if it does then tough luck and you can't whine about it..or it doesn't exist, it's just your over-active imagination, therefore you also can't whine about it bec it's just a fantasy..so which one is it?

If you would just drop your snide and harsh tone, I for one would start listening and would pay more attention to what you say...if you've got a lot of experience/knowledge then would it really be so bad to share it with the peter pans in this forum instead of your usual caustic one-liners?

Btw...are you a professor or a PI? I can't believe your a PI!!! I guess you completely ban the art of whining in your turf, eh?

yours,

casandra

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It is very interesting to read your arguments, jorge. It tells so much about your mind.....

If you blame the victims, what should a victim do to stop bullying? And please, spare the generalities "grow up" - does that mean "become agressive, too" or "don't care that someone that has power over you abuses it"? How to stop the abuse? Are all PIs the competent, sound scientific mentors they should be? And where's the teamwork in your mindset? Do you really think a good lab functions as a battleground? Don't you think that "sport" is only possible in fair play, where everyone's in equal position to defend your ideas? Do you think lab setting excludes human factor? Do you think that research assistants are inferior? Are your peers enemies?

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Spare me your pop psychology and your childish whining. No endeavor includes 100% competent leaders or supervisors. Only in grad school do you find the opportunity to whine and expect someone to indulge your immaturity regarding this fact.

After school, you are expected to find your place in the world - not the other way around. If you were to go into the Army, work in a factory, go into sales, etc. - do you really think anyone would cater to the complaints you've offered here? If you children were to get real jobs rather than stay in kindergarten - this would be obvious to you.

You have the rare opportunity to focus your intelligence and energies on one subject and, if you're worth anything, these should be among the most scientifically productive years of your career. Many will dwell on how mistreated they are, how their sense of entitlement to attention and being special isn't respected and they'll miss the fun.

Research assistants are in that role for a reason - they typically do not have the drive, confidence and sometimes skill to be more. This speaks to where folks have ended up by their own efforts and it may be a just a temporary stopping point as a career progresses. By analogy, consider MS and PhD. Both have advanced their career and skills beyond the undergrad and, for those who still get both, the 1st is a step toward the 2nd. There may be very good personal reasons why some might stop at the MS level but doing so is generally perceived to mean less drive and less potential to employers and there aren't alot of Nobel prizes or endowed chairs awarded to MS only - or lab assistants.

As I've said multiple times (are you listening casandra?), grow up. You'll have to sooner or later and it;s so much more enjoyable when you take control of your life.

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I think there is some confusion between bullying and the lack of drive. The difference between defending your idea and defending yourself from a physical beating. The difference between working nonstop from Monday to Sunday 15hr a day, to get the job done and having co-workers actively sabotaging your work. Or lab politics that have spiraled out of control.

I known one PI (who has since retired due to 'health problems') who had a nasty habit of picking up his PhD students by their shirts and throwing them out of his lab for small things such as speaking out of turn. He had the habit of getting right up in a person's face (about an inch or so; very hard to focus) and shouting at people when he disagreed with them.

To put it simply, he had a rather 'short temper'. And the strange thing was nobody in the lab complained. Maybe because as the PI he was important in securing funding for many of them. Or maybe because he was an important man in the department with multi million pound grants. I don't really know. Things only ended when said PI manhandled a undergrad.

My point is bullying in the lab isn't about doing good science or lack of drive. It is about people who are behaving in an unprofessional harmful manner towards you and learning what to do about it. Perhaps not a straight forward or as difficult as the example above. These things are problems and not everybody knows how to deal with it. So this is where more senior member of the community (such as yourself, jorge1907) should land a hand and a spot of advice. No different from giving advice to others to get a ligation, Southern or Western to work.

So what is the adult mature thing to do? Keep quite? Ignore? Step back and look at it from a impersonal point of view? Fight back? Leave? Report to higher authority, who? How?

Yes, i do agree with you jorge1907, standing up for yourself is a step forward, but yelling at everyone to 'grow up' and 'childish whining' doesn't help anybody. I can say the same thing to everybody who fails at ligation or PCR. I could go around saying ligation is as simple as falling out of a tree- So there is no reason to fail, ligation is so very easy. Saying that doesn't help anybody. It is not advice for any particular route of action.

And most people just need a head to nod and say yeah that he/she is evil but hang in there, remember stiff upper lip. But some people really do need help, and if they won't talk, they are liable to do things that will leave everybody in the department asking 'Why', 'She never said anything.' 'She shouldn't have done it'

On unrelated matter;

Ah yes, but for how many of us is this true? Scientific productivity only comes with freedom to debate ideas. And speaking from experience, not all PI see their PhD students as equals, some see us as nothing more as extra hands whose ideas are unimportant and best ignored. Of course I can imagine that you would say said PhD student if she/he were of any good would fight, challenge said PI and win. The reply to said challenge would be a faint smile and 'Hmm...might work, but focus on your work' aka the PI idea.

I am not saying you aren't right. The experience between PhD students is fantastically varied. I know a PhD student who have absolute freedom to do what ever he please so long as he got interesting result in a subject area and not break the grant. Another with less freedom but with greater focus. He was free to do, so long as objective were reached. The means are unimportant only the goal. And also another with little freedom and a blinding focus. To the point that almost everyone in the lab has work running in secret, keeping things away from the PI to allow some inventive freedom. (Control has been taken, but really is this a healthy lab environment?)


EDIT
Hi Casandra,
You are quite right, we do need more cake-loving PIs... well at least the attitude. If I become the PI, my lab will be model after the cake-eating PI's. It is so much calmer in her lab.

jorge1907 is right is some way, the simplest cases are just getting people to stand up for themselves, against their boss, against their peers. A little push, a little bit of advice on how to handle things diplomatically. And all things are fine.

But there are cases, like the example I used and the problem currently experienced by peanutnation. These too are cases of bullying or in real world terminology 'sabotage and physical intimidation'. And not everybody will have the support of their boss like peanutnation. Not everybody will have the grace under fire and know what to do. If peanutnation's boss had not believed him and kept demanding results? What then?

So, yes I do believe it is a problem. Not a giant big problem, but a problem that sometimes occurs and should be fixed rather than swept under the rug. It does occur and in high stress environment of a lab, it can turn ugly.

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I am a very driven postdoc (and was a very driven PhD student) who has survived bullying from fellow postdocs/students who see me as a threat. The bullying was psychological and included:

* hiding or disposing of my reagents
* adding detergents to my PBS (cell pellets dissolve in detergent)
* purposely contaminating my mammalian cell cultures
* telling the boss I did things to them (never did)
* shouting accusations at me in the lab
* preventing access to my data, generated on a communal machine (sometimes the data was moved into a different folder)

When I have tried to discuss this with the PIs, I was always told "you are a big girl, tough it out". Even when the evidence was clear, I have never had a boss reprimand the bully.

Sometimes it has been related to cultural differences (although when there are multiple people from the same culture in a lab and only 1 person plays the bully, why lump everyone in the same group).

I was taught and have experience with the concept that labs that work together, publish more and obtain more funding. When I am the PI and find one of my employees bullying another, the will have 1 chance only. Bullying is totally unacceptable in any work environment!

AussieUSA.

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It was a scholarship. I was a clueless undergrad, she was a clueless PhD student. The protocol involved work from 9.00 to 19.00 and did not allow for a lunchbreak. It was repeated sometimes twice a week. All fine, as she had the same problem, if not for some subtle differences: in my academic room, I did not have a freezer - only a small fridge - and there was only one kitchen (two burners) at the floor, which in the evening were usually busy. I did not have a car, too.
That meant after I left the lab, I couldn’t eat warm food. I couldn’t buy food either, because shops closed at 19.00 (other days I left that late, too - good I had the chance of eating the lunch). The only big shopping I did was on Saturdays, because on Sundays the shops were closed, too (I was used to shops open until 21.00 or even 24/h in my country), and without a car, I could only bring a certain amount of foods then.
Fresh food supply ended around Thursday, so I was eating snacks, sardines etc. for two days until I did shopping. No supper then; and also minus two lunches a week.
After a month, I didn’t really have any drive left. The only thing I thought about was food. Sometimes I was “too hungry to eat”. Snacks from vending machines and ramen noodles made me ill. I did not have a car, I could not even go to the supermarkets!
I’ve started to leave the lab early, to have something to eat and hoard some supplies. I’ve found some shops I could buy packed bread or other foods that were similar to those I’ve eaten at home, so they did not make me sick. I’ve quickly made supplies of dried or ready foods. Still, I’ve managed to lose 5 kilograms, which is around 10% of my body mass... and I barely had the energy to move.
Needless to say, she did not understand any of these, even after I discussed it; after all she did not have that kind of problems, in her big rented flat with two rooms, a kitchen, a freezer, a car and a washing machine. To her, I was just slacking. Stress added, new things to learn, plus she thought the best way to teach someone is to shout at her. I’ve endured the whole scholarship, but got back home in pieces, and had serious health issues for the next few months.
I am still a bit obsessed about food and I hoard it whenever I can. Well sounds funny, but you'd have to live that.
So, if you throw your undergrads in deep waters and expect them to work as hard as PhD students, try not to starve them... ?

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